This paper investigates how surviving atomic bombing victims’ identities are constructed in the context of Japan’s Second World War and postwar reconstruction. It demonstrates that the practice of defining survivors through multiple terminology disappeared progressively in favor of the systematic use of the same name “hibakusha”, literally “bombed persons”, revealing the tensions between a collective work of mourning the war and a longer-term work of making visible damaged bodies of the victims.
Key words: bombed persons, damaged bodies, hibakusha, Japan, postwar reconstruction, survivors.
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